


so I met up with some friends at the edge of the night

by philthestone



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mild Mentions of Blood, Panic Attacks, also like, brave lil toaster fights the mafia and comes out with a bit of ptsd, poor jake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 05:02:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5321483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, he'll tell her (<em>I had to watch a guy get killed in front of his son</em></p><p>  <em>three of my ribs got cracked in initiation and I still haven't been to see a doctor</em></p><p>  <em>I had to let a sixteen year old hooker sleep on my couch</em></p><p><em>Amy, I had to point a gun at someone's -)</em> what happened.</p><p>One day.</p><p>Right now, though, they're just two idiots crying in a car. But that's okay too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so I met up with some friends at the edge of the night

**Author's Note:**

> yoooo, I posted this here from tumblrino and added some things, so hey hey hey, give it a read.
> 
> I have a morbid fascination with the time gap between charges and specs and season two, and honestly my brave little sunflower does not deserve any of this pain, but here we are. Also, my heart continuously aches for Amy in that interim, because she was missing her best friend and probably had a lot of confused feelings.
> 
> Reviews are Fox doing us a solid and having Amy say "I love you" first. You feelin' me Fox? I know you're feelin' me. Enjoy!

It’s never happened before.

Of all the explanations Amy can come up with – of all the reasons for her own immobility, for her own shock and hesitation – the fact that she has never actually seen him like this before is what she thinks is the reason for her sudden, irrational surge of fear.

It’s not like Amy’s never seen someone have a panic attack before.

Amy knows panic attacks. She is intimately familiar with panic attacks. She has had them before, herself, coached herself through them and been coached through them by others - felt the iron clamp over her chest and heard the disjointed muddle of her own thoughts, known the dizziness and the all-consuming paralyzing anxiety, freezing her limbs into place.

For God’s sake, _Jake_ has calmed her down from a panic attack before.

But she’s _her_. Amy is _Amy_ , too high-strung for her own good, battling with anxiety ever since her teenage years, bordering on neurotically organized and tightly wound. Panicking is familiar to her. Panicking is, if she’s honest, _normal_ , for her.

They’re at a crime scene with the Sarge, investigating a homicide case like they’ve done thousands of times before. The dead man’s laying on the ground where he was left four hours before, the bullet through his head leaking a small stain onto the carpet under his face. The spatter of blood around the crown of his face looks like a constellation, stains dark and browning against the threadbare fuzz that Amy is sure must have, once upon a time, been white. And Amy looks around to ask her partner (her _partner_ , who she’s seen face down men twice his size brandishing guns, and laugh off bags of dismembered fingers like it’s no big deal) if he has any ideas about the suspect, when she feels her eyebrows lower automatically on her brow and a thrill of surprise rush through her midriff.

It takes her a minute to realize.

The thing is, when Amy has panic attacks, she starts hyperventilating. Her breath starts coming in short gasps and her whole body starts trembling and she looks and sounds a mess, gulping in air to compensate for the sudden lack in her bloodstream.

When Jake has panic attacks, it seems, he stops breathing altogether.

He’s rooted to the spot, his whole body frozen, staring down at the guy on the ground with his face as white as a sheet and his lips pressed together tightly, eyebrows creased across his forehead. There’s a tenseness in his shoulders and spine and neck, visible under the lines of his leather jacket, and Amy’s eye catches his hands, curled up into fists at his sides, trembling slightly.

She doesn’t get it, at first, too surprised and confused and thrown off by _this_ – this _different_ version of her partner, her friend, that _is_ him but isn’t him at all, too-pale and too-quiet and too-frozen, looking like someone decided to unceremoniously knock both the air and feet out from under him but somehow leave him still standing, unable to move.

“Jake?”

She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get it, doesn’t catch on, because for _God’s_ sake, it has never happened before, she’s never _seen_ him like this before, and he passed the psych eval, after he came back, he was gone for six months and she’s not sure he’ll ever actually tell her everything that happened only sometimes on off moments she’ll catch the flicker of something in his face, catch the uncharacteristically subdued silences, the flashes of anxiety in his eyes or the shortness of a laugh; catch the burgeoning trickle of maturity no doubt the result of keeping his head down and his wits about him and surviving in the goddamn _mob_ that’s somehow made him softer and harder all at once, but, _dammit_ , a part of Amy’s brain screams (the part which trusts unequivocally in the efficiency and truthfulness of Procedure and Protocol) he _passed_ the _psych eval._

_He’s supposed to be okay._

And then the Sarge’s hulking frame is suddenly there, in front of Jake, so quickly and efficiently that Amy’s scattered too-fast thoughts stutter to a halt and she opens her mouth to say – what? _Oh my God, Jake’s having a panic attack,_ because _that_ would be so helpful to everyone – but Terry’s there, blocking out the dead man on the floor from Jake’s line of sight, large hands settling firmly on the leather covering Jake’s wooden shoulders.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Terry’s saying, gentle and solid and commanding all at once. “Look at me, Jake. Eyes on me. Don’t look at the ground, look at me. There we go, hey? It’s me, it’s Terry. Come on, Jake.”

Amy’s still staring, something in her stomach curdling and collapsing in on itself.

He looks so lost.

“We’re gonna breathe together, okay? Focus on me. On me, Jake. There we go, I’m right here, we’re right here. It’s gonna be fine. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be fine. One breath at a time.”

“D-Detective Santiago?” The voice at her side causes Amy to start and whirl around, looking at the concerned looking officer to her left. “I checked in the kitchen like you asked. The only piece of evidence we –” The officer stops, shifting uncertainly, clearly distracted; the flick of his eyes behind Amy is not lost to her. “Um, is he okay?”

Like a slingshot, her wits have returned, her back straightening and her shoulders squaring and her stomach settling.

“He just got back from being undercover,” says Amy in a low voice, watching the officer’s eyes widen. “In the mafia,” she adds, because that’s – important.

His face morphs from concern to something that Amy thinks might be awe, which flares something at the pit of her stomach that she can’t identify, like, _this isn’t the time for awe, my partner’s freaking out back there and I’m completely useless to him and you don’t get to be excited about this, now._

(But that's inappropriate and she certainly can't say it out loud, so she bites down on her tongue and curls her fingers against the hems of her sleeves.)

“I – that’s – Holy _shit. He’s_ the guy who pulled off the Iannucci sting?”

“Yes,” says Amy shortly, taking the plastic baggie of evidence from the younger man’s hands and feeling irrationally protective – defensive – like her back is stiffening and her eyes are narrowing of their own accord. “And he’s having a panic attack, so if you could, you know, give him some space.”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, Jesus, of course –”

(She can still hear Terry behind her, voice steady and rumbling. _Breathe with me, one – inhale – two – exhale. One – inhale – two – exhale – there, that’s it, you’re doing great._

Amy tucks the plastic bag into her evidence folder and kneels down beside the man on the ground, scanning the floor, going through the movements like she would any other day. There’s something in the center of her chest that’s twisting, panging, something that won’t leave her alone but the only thing she can think to do is to keep on doing her job properly, because then they’ll solve the case and solving cases is what they’d be doing if things were normal, like before. Like he probably wants things to be, right now.)

They’re seated back at their desks at the precinct and Amy’s halfway through her mound of paperwork when Jake emerges from Captain Holt’s office and sits, slumped, in his chair across from her. He’s spent the last half-hour in there, talking about – what, Amy doesn’t know, but Terry had kept his hand on Jake’s shoulder the whole drive back to the precinct and Amy had listened to Jake’s muttered, half-hearted protests as he was steered into the office upon their return.

He looks – _pale_ , Amy thinks, like he’s had all the energy knocked out of him or he’s coming down with the flu. _Tired._

(She realizes, with a start, a swoop that twists at her stomach and makes her fingers feel too-warm, that he's been looking _tired_ since the morning he strode back into the precinct, smile firmly in place. Not gaunt, or sad, or broken, or bleeding or d -

Not any of the other things she'd spent those six months running through her head. But: _tired_.)

His eyes aren’t blank anymore, though, and he’s breathing again, and his shoulders have relaxed, lost the mouse-trap-tight quality that had so disturbed her back at the dingy little apartment with the blood on the carpet.

Jake’s frowning, looking at the floor. She watches him bounce his leg a couple times ( _nervous habit_ identifies her brain) and then straighten up in his chair, pull himself over to his desk, run his hand through his hair ( _when he's frustrated_ she remembers). He stares at his computer but his eyes are distracted, unfocused, bleary. His fingers fumble for something on the side and Amy realizes that he’s grabbed onto the old rubber band ball sitting at the edge of his desk ( _defensive_ screams a voice in her head, running through all the times he's grabbed at one of the trinkets on his desk and fiddled with it when he was uncomfortable, frustrated, distressed over _something_ ). 

His fingers are gripping it just slightly more tightly than is normal.

Amy remembers her work at the apartment, wrapping up the evidence, recording the time and date and location, the possible suspects and their next moves, looking at the dead man on the floor and that constellation of blood around his head. She remembers Terry guiding Jake over to the couch on the other side of the house, in the living room – sitting him down and kneeling in front of him, talking in low, gentle tones as Jake nodded and mumbled responses that Amy couldn’t hear, the panicked look still lingering in his brown eyes.

It’s been a little over two weeks since he’s gotten back, and she _knows_ she’s been avoiding him.

She pauses, tells herself that it’s because she’s been busy, that it’s because _he’s_ been busy, that it’s not really avoiding him because she’s still seeing him every day and working cases with him and everything’s fine and normal and it’s not like it’s _her_ responsibility to notice the tiredness in his eyes or to poke or prod him with questions like, _so, have any traumatic life-changing experiences while you were undercover with the mafia?_

She also tells herself that this is all bullshit, that she spent six months worrying about him, six months with a tension in her own shoulders and anxiety clawing at the pit of her stomach – and it’s been two weeks and that anxiety has suddenly, abruptly, turned into guilt, roiling and burning at the bottom of her gut. She’s his _partner_. She’s been his partner for _six years._

He’s been her _responsibility_ for six years, and she’s spent probably five of those pretending to hate that that statement is true, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t, or that she isn’t an awful, selfish person for prioritizing her own confusion over his obvious need for – for _something_ , for support, for - 

Amy grips tightly at her pen and bites at her lip, thinks about how many times he's sat with her on the floor and waited patiently until she got her own breathing under control, thinks about how he showed up at her apartment at midnight and taught her how to make zucchini bread when she couldn't sleep because she was stressed about evaluations the next day, thinks about the spare key to his apartment she has sitting buried in the bottom of her pajama drawer and the old sweater of Terry's that they've claimed as Their Own, the one they pass back and forth on late nights working at the precinct when one of them needs to take a nap on the break room couch.

She thinks: her own inability to deal with The Feelings In The Room is _not_ Jake’s fault.

(She also thinks that Jake would be the first one to hear her internal monologue and say, tapping his fingers against the desk and giving her that little frown he gets, sometimes, when he’s genuinely concerned: “Amy, chill, it’s not your fault. I made things weird, I get it.”

But that train of thought isn’t helping her either, because Jake In Her Head forgiving her for her self-diagnosed selfishness makes her feel, if possible, even more guilty.)

She glances at the clock; she’s just gone three minutes over her shift.

Two signatures and one report conclusion later, she’s gone twenty minutes over her shift, Jake is still frowning aimlessly at his computer, and Amy gets up, neatly packs up her bag, and positions herself in front of his desk.

“Come on,” she says.

Jake looks up at her, the flash of surprise on his face quickly morphing into an exaggeratedly-raised eyebrow. “Only twenty minutes, huh? Santiago, I can’t believe you, you absolute disgrace to this precinct. You usually do forty, at the _least_.”

“Jake,” she says. “Get up. I’m taking you home.”

“Home,” he repeats dumbly, his eyebrows still raised. His leg bounces again, Amy notices out of the corner of her eye – _one two three four five six_ – the heel of his sneaker squeaking infinitesimally against the tiled floor.

“Um,” she says. “Well, your place, yeah. And I’m ordering Indian food.”

“Indian food.”

“And we’re going to watch what is definitely _not_ the best cop movie of all time,” Amy says. “So, like, get up. My car’s downstairs.”

“ _Now?”_

She can’t think of anything better to say – any better explanation to give, as if she gave an explanation in the first place – so she crosses her arms and taps her foot expectantly.

Jake leans back in his chair, his breath coming out in one big _whoosh_ , and then bounces right back forward and rocks up to his feet, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair.

“I call dibs on the buttered naan.”

“Duh,” says Amy, because she’d already been thinking that she would order an extra container of buttered naan just for that express purpose. “But that means I get all the chicken tikka.”

 _“Ugh_ , Santiago –”

“We made a deal!”

“That was _five years ago_ –”

“And it still stands today! If you call dibs on naan, I get extra tikka and vice-versa, we _signed_ on this Peralta –”

They’re still bickering when they get to the parking lot, still arguing over the helpings of masala and how far they’re going to push their threshold of Chilli-Induced-Pain this time (“I’m still winning,” Amy reminds him smugly, and it’s true – the last time, she had managed to get through a whole bowl full of extra hot chilli paneer without choking or shedding a tear once, while Jake gave up in protest after three bites of his chicken, gasping for water). It’s when they slip into the car and Amy does her seatbelt, turns on the car – that, suddenly, Jake falls silent, leaving the end of the conversation hanging.

Amy glances over at him through the corner of her eye but doesn’t comment, pulling out of the parking lot. She bites her lip at looks directly ahead at the road and thinks about how Teddy is working late on a case tonight and how, irrationally and frustratingly, that makes her feel better about –

No. She's not doing anything wrong.

The lights from the dark streets cast moving shadows over the car, colours falling over her fingers on the wheel and sweeping over them as they drive.

She wants to say, _I know I haven’t been that great of a partner lately, but –_

She wants to say, _please talk to me, like you used to, overshare all the dumb little details with me and I promise I won’t ignore you or roll my eyes –_

She wants to say, _look, you’re my partner, I need to know that you’re alright, that you won’t freeze up again like that again._

She wants to say, _please, be okay._

She wants to say, _I’m sorry._

(She doesn’t want to think about exactly what she’s sorry for.)

Amy traces the blue flash against the windshield and takes a deep breath, about to open her mouth -

“I’m not –”

Jake’s voice makes her jerk her head around, mouth snapping shut before her words come out, surprised; he’s frowning at his hands, now, sitting motionless in his lap, and there’s a look in his eyes, like confusion, like hurt, like frustration, seeping out the edges of his hard-set mouth and the renewed tension in his shoulders.

“What?”

“I’m okay, you know,” he says, and it’s too loud in the small space of the front seat of the car. “I’m not – there’s nothing – nothing _wrong_. I’m okay.”

“I know,” says Amy, even though she doesn’t, and her stomach is doing that thing again – collapsing in on itself, twisting and dropping and tightening into a knot. “I know you’re okay, Jake.”

But he’s shaking his head. “Today was – I didn’t mean – it’s just –” He makes a frustrated noise and reaches up to push back his too-long curls, head dropping back against the headrest and shoulders easing up, slumping so that he’s pressed up against the window.

“The way he was just – on the _floor,_ it reminded me of –” Sharp inhale, and the tension’s back “ – something I had to, to do. One time. It’s –”

He breaks off, half-laughing half-scoffing, cheek pressing against the cool window of the passenger’s seat.

Amy tightens her grip on the steering wheel. “Jake –”

“You don’t have to – to do this, you know,” he says suddenly, twisting so he can look at her. “I’m _okay_ , Amy, I promise.”

Amy feels herself frown. “I’m not doing anything.”

“Indian food,” he says. “Or whatever.”

And suddenly everything she’d wanted to say flies out of the car window and into the traffic.

“Don’t be a butthead,” she says, maybe a little more harshly than she intends, but she can’t stop herself and maybe it’s because of her own guilt – trying to convince herself that she _isn’t_ feeling guilty, that is, and is that working for her, really, she couldn't tell you – she shakes her head at the road deliberately. “Jake, I wasn’t about to let you hole yourself up at the precinct all night looking aimlessly at your computer and not sleeping – which, okay, shut up, I _know_ you were planning on doing, so don’t – just, come on, man, I _know_ you –”

“Amy –”

“And we – we haven’t hung out? In forever? And I guess I just felt like hanging out and I’m willing to watch Die Hard with you and _why are you even complaining?”_

She feels herself let out a puff of breath she didn’t know was still trapped in her lungs and Jake’s looking at her with an unreadable expression, and Jake doesn’t _do_ unreadable expressions, and Amy feels the most irrational surge of hot, prickly tears behind her eyes, complementing the curdles in her gut, when the dam breaks and Jake’s eyes have softened, and he’s exhaling; shaky and stuttering.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Amy’s fingers grip at the wheel; his voice is breaking.

“Jake –”

“I’m sorry I’m a mess,” he’s saying, but the unreadable expression is gone and there’s a soft, small smile that’s made its way onto his lips, and even though she caught the over-brightness of his eyes when she looked across a second before, the smile is –

It’s familiar, sincere, the corners of his too-big mouth curling upwards and so so very _Jake_.

So Amy says, “It’s okay,” and hopes, desperately, that it is.

“Hey.” Jake’s voice is still shaky. “Radio?”

“I’ll let you pick the stations,” says Amy, her voice still scratchy (her chest still panging). “I won’t even yell if you change it a million times.”

“Your ability to be subtle about how fragile you must think I am right now is _amazing_ , Santiago.”

“Shut up, Peralta.”

(He doesn’t turn on the radio and instead hums under his breath for the rest of the five minutes it takes them to get to his apartment.

Amy tries not to think about how much she's missed him and lets herself smile.)


End file.
